The quest mechanics really bother me, too. I don't even know what they were thinking with them, because the restriction is silly. It's not like my random side quest is in the way of the main quest - it's not even in the same area!

More minor of a complaint, but I'm finding the AI popping up in the middle of story conversations to be really annoying, even distracting.

That said, I was extremely happy to finally see some 3D NPC models roaming about instead of having them as 2D the entire game. Also

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Love the atmosphere once you finally get down to Tokyo. This is what I've been waiting for!

I haven't encountered the death mechanics yet, but the save anywhere thing sure is nice.

We talked about this yesterday, but having spent more time, I can appreciate your frustration with the camera but honestly can't say I've had that problem. You can hear enemies spawning, and all you have to do to spin around is press back and hit the B button.

Quest-wise, the system is weird. I don't really like it. It strikes me that they did it because they were like 'OH WE ARE ON A HANDHELD SO WE MUST MAKE BITESIZE.' I haven't had any real issues with it, but I still think it makes the game feel more compartmentalized than it does.

And I don't mind the AI, but she is incredibly chatty and doesn't really... add anything to the conversation.

Overall, I'm enjoying it. It's way easier than earlier games in the series, which I don't like, but I also don't expect everyone to enjoy "playing very hard on Persona 4"-level of difficulty and time demands.

I hate the quest blackboard. It's so random. Burroughs says "I'll log these quests" and I'm like, what fricken quests. This isn't a quest blackboard it's an annoying irrelevant leaderboard. I got 1st place in something once and I got...nothing!

Classic Eusis... create a new topic after people have been discussing it forever on another page

Perhaps I should've done it earlier, but the game just came out, was a big enough deal, and at least in the last few pages I couldn't find an older SMTIV topic, so a new one primarily talking about playing the game rather than being part of general MegaTen discussion seemed like a good idea.

... About 8 hours in, stuck on

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Medusa. I get that I need to use wind spells, but I keep getting wrecked so I think I'll need to do some recruiting + fusing. And see if there's any good resistive/null armor for lightning.

Yup, that's a hard one, Eusis. I think I just got lucky on my third time.

Ran into the same problem I always run into with these games. Got a boss that uses a specific type of attack and ALL of my current demons are weak to it (and no one in my stock is high enough level to fight effectively). I know, shame on me, but I have almost no fusion options right now and I'm going to have to backtrack to recruit some guys. Really frustrating.

Also, there are like no physical copies of this at all around here. I ended up getting stupidly lucky and found one right off the bat. At least I got it and can now start saving up for Tales of Xillia.